The age of carnage: 10 leaders in 10 years

On January 18, 2005, Mark Latham announced his resignation both from the leadership of the Labor Party and the Parliament. He cited family pressures and attacked the media. Including that day, the two major parties have gone through 10 leaders in 10 years – unprecedented leadership churn and carnage. And there hasn't even been a recession.

With an unforgiving regularity, we saw the arrival and/or departure of, in chronological order: Latham, Kim Beazley, Kevin Rudd, John Howard, Brendon Nelson, Malcolm Turnbull, Tony Abbott, Julia Gillard, Rudd (again) and Bill Shorten. Since 2007, the prime minister has been removed from office four times, yet only twice by the voters.

Illustration: michaelmucci.com

Five times in the past decade either the prime minister or the opposition leader was removed by a party coup before even facing the next election: Beazley, Nelson, Turnbull, Rudd and Gillard. All had poor poll numbers except Rudd. He had other problems.

Now the public, according to the polls, wants a fifth prime minister removed in seven-and-a-half years, and an 11th major leadership change in 11 years.

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If the past is prelude, Prime Minister Abbott is going to be engulfed by the churn. His polling numbers are as bad as any leader's since polling started. He was expressly asked not to appear during both the Victorian and Queensland elections, while the Leader of the Opposition was ubiquitous.

His conduct before the Queensland election was obtuse in the extreme. Exit polling in Queensland found Abbott was a factor in the disintegration of support for Premier Campbell Newman and his government. It was confirmed to me by a Liberal strategist that this election was not simply a parochial result. It was a violent electoral swing, with Abbott's unpopularity in the mix.

Gone are the days when a party would stick by its leader as Labor stuck by Arthur Calwell from 1960 to 1967, until he had lost three elections (1961, 1963 and 1966) and turned 70.

What does all this churn signify? There has not been a recession for 25 years, let alone a depression, nor a war requiring national effort, nor a great scandal larger the usual bastardry of politics.

There is one obvious answer after the Queensland result, one that Coalition politicians should consider: the public has had a gutsful of selling public assets, and then paying higher prices for using formerly public assets. The public has spoken again and again on this issue. They have been ignored again and again.

On a deeper level, the carnage is a sign of our intense immersion in social media, giving society a collective attention deficit disorder. Everything is faster now.

Nine of the 10 major party leaders in the past decade have been intelligent politicians. Most appear to be decent people. Only one was a proven disaster – the monomaniacal Kevin Rudd. When Rudd was came to power in 2007 he inherited a strong economy, no Commonwealth debt, a healthy budget surplus, a secure banking system and secure borders.

It will take at least a decade to repair the damage he left behind. He also contributed to the churn far more than any other. Rudd's own conduct was a key element in seven leadership changes in seven years: Beazley (2006), Howard (2007), Nelson (2008), Turnbull (2009), himself (2010), Gillard (2013) and himself again (2013).

Through all this, hidden behind the money that poured into the economy from the Chinese economic revolution, Australia has become one of the most high-cost countries in the world, with a structural budget deficit, a projected half a trillion dollars in Commonwealth debt, high youth unemployment and unsustainable welfare spending.

Any government that tries to deal with this should beware.

Ask Campbell Newman. He inherited a parlous budget position left by a poor government. He moved quickly, and often ruthlessly, to reel it in. He restored Queensland to fiscal health. And he was sacked by the voters at the first opportunity.

Ask Joe Hockey. After a single budget, he is no longer the heir apparent to the Liberal leadership. Since I wrote last Thursday that the party was considering turning back to Turnbull, his name has never been mentioned in the febrile leadership speculation of recent days. The best he can hope for is that his second budget alienates neither the public nor a Senate majority, and yet confronts the budget emergency he has declared. Given the erratic nature of the Palmer United Party, and the scorched-earth tactics of Labor, Hockey is our modern Sisyphus.

Ask Tony Abbott. His government has confronted the blow-out in debt and deficit. It completed historic free-trade agreements with China, Japan and South Korea. It stopped the people-smuggling trade. It restored relations with Indonesia damaged by Labor's spying and suspension of live cattle exports. It has had no Ruddian grandiose disasters. It does not have a Senate majority. It has been in office just 16 months, with just one budget.

And the people are leaning into the amphitheatre and giving Abbott the thumb's down. Death.

We are seeing a culling of leaders in an incessant and carnivorous news cycle that is chewing up people who took a path to public office that is much harder and more dangerous than carping from the sidelines. Newman, a former Army major, went into battle with big policies and acted on them. He didn't seek to be parachuted into a safe seat. He died in electoral battle honourably and he departed honourably.

"This is the end of my political career", he said on election night. In his TV appearances on Sunday he even seemed relieved. I don't blame him.

Paul Sheehan is a columnist and editorial writer for The Sydney Morning Herald, where he has has been Day Editor and Washington correspondent. He is the author of two number-one best-sellers, 'Girls Like You' and 'Among The Barbarians' and been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times and numerous anthologies.